The Families

Your contribution will be much appreciated and added to our blog. Please note: Stories that are shown as follows ^i^, sadly involve the death of a child.

Baby Toby

Toby – a miracle survivor for Bettina and Chris Martin

It was 2am on a Saturday morning in April 2001, two days before my due date, when I felt a sudden gush and woke to find my waters had broken. There was a lot of it, probably because I had too much amniotic fluid, a condition known as ‘Polyhydramnios’. I had been given a number of scans because of the excess fluid and was advised to be aware that, if the membranes ruptured, there was a slight chance that the waters could bring down the umbilical cord. Apart from this, my pregnancy throughout went well.

I felt excited that at long last I would see my baby soon and, at the same time, extremely nervous about the birth. Then to my surprise, I noticed that the colour of the amniotic fluid was reddish ��� it was obvious that there was blood in the fluid. This concerned me although I couldn’t quite recall, in my confused state, whether this was normal. I was sure that my NCT teacher had told me that the waters were normally clear or tinged slightly pink.

My husband, Chris, rushed to the telephone and the midwife at the hospital told us not to worry and said that redness in the waters can be quite normal. She advised us to visit the hospital in 2 to 3 hours in order to be examined, and in the meantime, to have a bath. The midwife did not feel it necessary for us to go immediately in to the hospital. After all, she said, we would no doubt be sent home again before the onset of labour. My instincts were telling me strongly that something was wrong, and ten minutes later, I decided to make a second call to the midwife. Despite the redness of the fluid, the midwife still didn�����t seem concerned.

On the advice of the midwife, I then took a quick bath, in between trying to clean up the many red coloured stains all over the carpet and bed sheets.

My husband and I then decided to drop everything and just get to the hospital.